Criss Cross (1949)

Film: Criss Cross (1949)

Stars: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne de Carlo, Dan Duryea

Director: Robert Siodmak

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the unique things, and perhaps one of the reasons I'm so drawn to the genre, about film noir is that I generally like the mainstay actors involved.  This isn't the case for westerns, which is my other favorite genre of the 1940's & 50's.  I would rarely name-check actors like John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gene Autry, & Roy Rogers as amongst my favorites, but with noir you get Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart...these are actors that I love.  But every exception has a rule, and one of the big ones for me is Burt Lancaster.  Lancaster has his fans, and he certainly can find a role or two where his appeal is obvious (Sweet Smell of Success being the one where even I am giving the thumbs up), but he isn't for me & he is in a lot of noted film noirs.  He's too bombastic, too over-the-top, and rarely matches the tone of his picture.  This is clear in Criss Cross, a classic film largely due to its unusually-filmed ending, but one that gets lost far before that ingenuity will pay off.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is strangely-structured, not because it is told in flashback (this is a common trope of film noir), but because it is paced oddly when it gets to the flashback.  We see maybe 10-15 minutes of the present day, then go back to the original story of how Steve Thompson (Lancaster), a hood who was madly in love with a woman named Anna (de Carlo) ended up losing her to his rival Slim Dundee (Duryea), a ruthless criminal whom we see him fighting with in the film's opening scenes.  The two team up on a robbery, but it is bungled badly when Slim double-crosses him and leaves Steve clearly carrying the bag for the crime.  The film's final third is Steve seeking out Anna, wanting to run away with her after he escapes from the hospital that he's in (and it's clear he's about to be jailed).  But it's Anna who is actually doing the titular "criss cross," deciding to run away without the injured Steve and using the money to start her own life free of both men.  Before she can do this, though, Slim comes in and kills them both, with Thompson holding the woman he loved as they both perish...knowing she never truly loved him the way he loved her.

The plot sounds good, right?  Revenge, lust, betrayal...all the cornerstones of a great film noir.  But it doesn't work that way in practice.  The flashbacks last too long, and are honestly a bit confusing.  I get the point of Anna not really loving any man (she is more in it for self-preservation), but they telegraph that poorly, making it seem just that Anna is confused.  De Carlo, who would eventually be famous for her work on The Munsters and in the original cast of Follies (she was the original vocalist for the Sondheim classic "I'm Still Here,") was at this point best known for her scandalous performance in the film Salome.  A great beauty, she was not a particularly good actress in her youth, and it shows in the way she can't handle this part, frequently making it seem like she's "trying again" on Anna every time she is in a new scene...Ava Gardner or Lana Turner would've been better.

But it's not de Carlo who is totally to blame here.  Lancaster is scenery-chewing in every corner of the screen, and Duryea (who is the best actor of the three, and always a welcome addition), isn't in enough of the movie to lift from the sidelines.  The movie isn't all bad-I loved the cinematography, which feels amateurish in the best way as the characters are almost begging the audience in a fourth-wall break they're so often looking at the camera-but this should've been better given its reputation & solid story idea.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Woman on the Beach, Brighton Rock, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat